Microsoft Launches Office 2010

Microsoft Corp. has announced the worldwide availability of Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010, as well as Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010, for business customers worldwide. More than 90 million businesses can now deploy the 2010 suite of products, and customers can expect to see significant productivity gains and greater return on their software investments.

“Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 define the future of productivity,” said Stephen Elop, President, Business Division, Microsoft. “With the 2010 set of products, organisations will save, innovate and grow as their people benefit from working across the PC, phone and browser.”

A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, “The Total Economic Impact of Implementing Microsoft’s Integrated Office Productivity Platform,” May 2010, evaluated the 2010 releases of Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The Forrester TEI model employs four fundamental elements including costs, benefits to the entire organisation, flexibility and risk.

The study found that the composite organisation would see more than $13 million in savings over a three-year period and on average, a savings of more than two work weeks per year. Microsoft’s Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 beta programs were the largest ever, with three times the number of participants compared with the Office 2007 beta program. As a result, 8.6 million people are already using Office 2010 and related products. In addition, more than 1,000 partners are already building solutions for the 2010 set of products.